At the last meeting of the West Midlands Wood Turners, the club secretary told me he’d been contacted by a silver smith who was in need of some turned items, and whether I’d be willing to give it a shot. Sure, I said, just send me the details.
A few days later I had the contact details, made contact, and pointed the fellow at this website, then asked him to give me a call when he was ready to talk about further details. I didn’t hear anything for the next two weeks, and I thought: maybe he didn’t like what he saw or maybe he doesn’t think I am good enough. After all, I am not a professional wood turner.
As it turns out, I was completely wrong. Paul is a silver smith, who does mostly spun work (as in metal spinning). In other words, lots of round stuff (sounds familiar, doesn’t it?).
In difference to me, he does this professionally, but at the same time he’s got some ideas he wants to pursue in his private time. So we had a really nice, long chat about possibilities, and I walked away with a copper prototype for a bottle coaster, and promised him to make a few prototype inserts from different woods, and with different finishes.
Let’s see, maybe this is going somewhere. Who knows?